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1001 Weird Animal Facts
Windbit
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just found out that moray eels have two sets of jaws, and personally I find that incredibly interesting. It's amazing to see all the features that came into being through evolution. Since I'm sure I don't know everything about animals, I thought it would be fun to pool our collective knowledge of how animals are so much cooler than we give them credit for.
1) Penguins have an organ above their eyes that filters salt water, preventing the bird from ingesting too much salt while feeding in the ocean. The salt is excreted through the nostrils, and sometimes is sneezed out.
2) The tongue-eating louse is so named because it actually replaces the tongue of it's host. The louse crawls into a fish's gills and makes its way to the base of the tongue. Once there, it feeds on the tongue until nothing is left. To keep its host from dying, however, it anchors itself where the fish's tongue used to be and serves as its host's new tongue.
3) The bee orchid is a plant whose flowers resemble bees so much that male bees attempt to have sex with them. The plant's pollen sticks to any bees that attempt to copulate with it.
4) When the male deep sea anglerfish, which is tiny compared to the female of the species, finds a mate, it bites her skin and never lets go of her. Eventually the male grows attached to the female: his blood vessels link to hers, the eyes degenerate and finally vanish, and all eventually all that is left of the male is a sack of enlarged testes. The female, now possessing both male and female sex organs, continues to live on as a hermaphrodite.
1) Penguins have an organ above their eyes that filters salt water, preventing the bird from ingesting too much salt while feeding in the ocean. The salt is excreted through the nostrils, and sometimes is sneezed out.
2) The tongue-eating louse is so named because it actually replaces the tongue of it's host. The louse crawls into a fish's gills and makes its way to the base of the tongue. Once there, it feeds on the tongue until nothing is left. To keep its host from dying, however, it anchors itself where the fish's tongue used to be and serves as its host's new tongue.
3) The bee orchid is a plant whose flowers resemble bees so much that male bees attempt to have sex with them. The plant's pollen sticks to any bees that attempt to copulate with it.
4) When the male deep sea anglerfish, which is tiny compared to the female of the species, finds a mate, it bites her skin and never lets go of her. Eventually the male grows attached to the female: his blood vessels link to hers, the eyes degenerate and finally vanish, and all eventually all that is left of the male is a sack of enlarged testes. The female, now possessing both male and female sex organs, continues to live on as a hermaphrodite.
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One in particularly, or all of them? Because I think the anglerfish one is the most alien.
See that thing below her tail fin? That's the male.
BTW, her face reminds me of a beholder.
I remember the first time I noticed this. I was watching a snail, and I noticed a hole appear on its neck. It started opening and closing, and at first I thought it breathed through that whole. It didn't take long to find out that I was mistaken.
Personally, the Platypus is one of those animals that makes little sense. A mammal that has a bill, lays eggs, and the males have a large talon that excreets poison? Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Mostly the louse and the anglerfish ones.
I remember watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos and being impressed with the Heike crabs, whose carapace resembles the face of a samurai mask and was explained as a product of artificial selection by humans. Superstitious fishermen would throw back the crabs resembling faces, so those resembling samurai survived. It was probably my first and strongest impression of the power of Darwinian evolution.
Here's another factoid: Octopus' eyes always stay right side up, even if the rest of the animal's body is upside down.
It doesn't get cooler than microkroot.
Oh My God That Is So Fucking Cool.
It's a shrimp, BTW, not a crab.
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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/sharkland/cannibalism.html
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cos Big Al said so
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That's not a hummingbird. It's a moth that mimics hummingbirds.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Poor ants
Poor mindcontrolled zombie fungus ants
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Suddenly the wacky Protoculture thing in Robotech isn't so wacky. If I remember correctly, it was a seed with a specialized bit of DNA that contracted to create nuclear fusion between two trapped atoms, all to crack its own protective shell.
...anyway.
I've always been a big fan of ants, especially the way their language and "hivemind" work. An individual ant is basically a little mobile computing node - just enough brain to control movement, carry out orders, and use one of only a few chemical signals. One ant is pathetically stupid and will most likely get itself killed. Get a group of them together, though, and they begin acting as neurons in a larger brain, and something eerily similar to rational decision-making emerges.
Next time you find an ant in your house, just remember: its family is thinking about you.
Jesus, this thing is so fucking cool. I saw it on Fooled by Nature a while ago.
I love Animal Planet.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
The woodpecker's tongue takes a rather circuitous route through its head:
Also, you can lead a cow upstairs but not down. Ricky Gervais said so.
A duck's quack echoes, despite the urban (or rural depending on the location of the duck) legend that it doesn't.
A tapir has 14 toes.
Snakes' tongues are forked for binocular smelling, the same way we have two eyes and ears.
hahaha
You've seen them fuck, I take it? The way they're shaped, they kind of need to have something that has good reach.
Bigger turtles just spooge like Victoria Falls so that enough of it dribbles down the female's back and reaches the sex organs. I have seen this first hand, and it's a fucking fountain.
You caught my interest,
umm, where did you see this happen?
My girlfriend's parents ran an animal show up in Ohio for a while, and it included several very large, very old tortoises, a handful of snakes, and a variety of fluffy creatures as well, like sugar gliders, hedgehogs (OMG cute), skunks, and chinchillas.
The best part was that a few of the tortoises were as big as their chow, which was deathly afraid of them. They had a couple of birds that made a habit of using the tortoises as perches, too, as did the chinchillas at times. It was a very confused house.
anyway back on topic.
A squid has 10 tentacles.
A snail's reproductive organs are in its head.
A swan is the only bird with a penis.
More people are killed annually by donkeys than in airplane crashes.
Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 liter bottles.
This article about the longest bird penis (NSFW) begs to differ.
Like the fact that rats have prehensile penises, which evolved because after sex, they excrete a sealent, which effectively corks the female so no other dude can knock her up. The prehensile penis is used to remove the last guy's cork.
Awww it's so sad!
Hummingbird hearts can beat 500/600 per minute on average, top out in the thousands bpm, and go as low as 40 bpm.
There's also some birds in Alaska that flash their boob plumage to attract females which is freaking hilarious. I saw this on PBS a few years ago, I think.
That is ridiculously cool.
The shrimp - bubble - temperature thing reminds me of cold fusion experiments. The researcher claimed that bubbles could create temps approaching the sun temperature, thus sustaining cold fusion.. I think he was laughed at...
Who's laughing now, science ?
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